When wealthy landowners and locals collide

Does a trout know who owns the
body of water it lives in? This is not a Buddhist riddle. The
answer is: Of course not. All a trout, elk or black-footed ferret
cares about is whether the water or land can sustain them. Some of
us have forgotten that unadorned fact. Motivated by laudable
concerns over social change, some Westerners have moved into class
warfare instead of asking a simpler and more basic question:
“How is the land being treated?” A good place to answer
that question is Mitchell Slough in Montana’s rapidly growing
Bitterroot Valley.

Mitchell “Slough” is a
100-year-old ditch that diverts water from the Bitterroot River and
moves it to downstream ranches. Over the years, the ditch became a
low-quality "naturalized" stream fed by some springs. When I first
saw it in the early 1970s, it was 40 feet wide and 10 inches deep,
with its bed encased in mud. Few willows provided cover, so most of
the trout that ventured up the channel were nailed by osprey and
eaten.

Years later, the singer Huey Lewis, businessman
Ken Siebel and other denizens of the “super-rich” -- a
Western code word implying “evil-doers” -- bought
ranches along Mitchell Slough. They donated conservation easements
and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to restore
aquatic habitat. They hired Dave Odell, a fishing guide and stream
restorer, who’d helped secure in-stream flow for a dying
Bitterroot River, to do the work. Odell got the mud out of the
channel, created meanders, cabled logs and planted riparian
vegetation along the banks. He also built nesting islands for geese
and created spawning beds for trout.

Afterward, the
ranchers closed the restored ditch-stream, which aroused the ire of
a group called the Bitterroot River Protective Association. To gain
public access, it promptly sued Lewis, Siebel and two dozen mostly
unknown neighbors along Mitchell Slough. The group lost, but is now
appealing the case to the Montana Supreme Court.

What do
they claim? Despite more than 90 miles of the Bitterroot River and
scores of tributary streams open to fishing, despite an excellent
system of state river-access sites, and despite the ecological need
for lightly used habitat, the Montanans suing apparently believe
that their innate right to trespass and fish remains gravely
injured. Their ideology appears to be: “If I can’t use
it, what good is it?”

Members of the Bitterroot
River Protective Association cared little for Mitchell Slough
before it was restored, and now its members want to fish there to
make a blunt point with newcomers: “This is our valley, not
yours.” As a result, the group has tarred good people like
Huey Lewis and Ken Siebel with the broad brush of elitism.
They’re helped by having a charismatic leader in Montana Gov.
Brian Schweitzer, who has vowed to protect river access for average
Montanans. This adds little of substance to the debate, however,
since Mitchell Slough, it turns out, is too small for floating.

I have come to believe that what matters most in the
changing West is not land ownership, but land stewardship. Critics
tend to focus on the bank account of the donor, not the
on-the-ground benefit. But if public access wins at Mitchell
Slough, what landowner would ever restore a ditch or spring creek
again? Is that the outcome we want?

The message of
Mitchell Slough runs deep. I have worked with easements for more
than 30 years and now chair the New Mexico Land Conservancy. We
have put over 50,000 acres of ranches, farms, and open space under
easement in just four years; some of the donors are wealthy, some
are not. In any case, wildlife don’t know the difference.

For the West to mature as a society, we need to get over
the fact that rich people are moving here. It turns out that many
of them care about the land just as much as we do. It matters
little that a rich person saved a stretch of Mitchell Slough
instead of a working-class person, or that George W. Bush expanded
the income tax deductions for conservation easement donations
instead of Bill Clinton. What matters most is our shared
stewardship of this achingly beautiful landscape. The blame game
will never conserve private lands in the West. This is the time for
clear thinking and a new way forward.

Jack
Wright is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org).
He heads the geography department at New Mexico State University
and lives in Mesilla, New Mexico.

More from Water

Jack, I agreed with your column and enjoyed
it until I read your comment "it's too small for
floating". In Montana that is completely
irrelevant. Our stream access laws allow us to walk in
and along any piece of water as long as we stay below the high
water mark. (unlike states like Colorado where floating
is relevant to the discussion).

Jack, “You crack me up; you really, really
do.”
It
is…interesting…how you refer to Mitchell
Slough as a
"100-year-old-ditch." Let me
remind you that Mitchell Slough was not dug out of dry ground, but
was actually dug on top on an existing
stream.It was a nice stream
too- directing spring runoff into the adjacent Bitterroot wetlands
for later river recharge; fed by cold springs in the hot
summer; and a nice piece of habitat for all sorts of flora
and fauna. Apparently you missed that day at school when
they taught "pre-100-years-ago
history." Unfortunately for
Montana’s public, Mitchell Slough also happened to be a
nice place for an irrigation ditch, and was abused for that
purpose.It always cracks
me up when people get “cute” with the facts,
but you are getting “cute” with your logic
too.According to your logic,
private entities can engineer a stream into a
"ditch" for some appreciable period of time,
later "restore" it to a stream, then keep the
pesky public out. That makes sense, Jack. Using your
logic, the Columbia River is a series of
75-year-old-canals. I guess the public has no
right to access that ditch either.So the next relevant question for you
Jack, is who is paying you to draft these
lies?Did you get an invite to
fish the Slough?

Perhaps you needed some cash
because you “wanna new drug?” Maybe you think
you are “too hip to be
square?”Regardless,
the “heart of rockin’ roll is still
beatin’” up Montana’s stream access
law.

One final thing, Jack – who owns the fish in
Mitchell Slough?The law says
the public, but the de facto answer is those
with access own the fish.